Former Different World actress and Lenny Kravitz musical protégé, Cree Summer addresses both her Canadian Indian roots and her oneness with earth (covering both the personal and universal obligations of her singer-songwriter role) on her debut album, Street Faerie. But even with those foregone topics in place, it all comes off sounding a little too much like hippie-dazed philosophizing caked in neo-psychedelic rhetoric. Producer Kravitz keeps his usual retrogazing to a minimum here, allowing Street Faerie to breathe in its own organic surroundings and to develop a style more reserved than on any of his own recordings. Summer herself ably blends R&B and alt-rock, yet the album excels in neither, eventually leaving its author, and the listener, to walk away with an indifferent shrug. ~ Michael Gallucci, All Music Guide
Street Faërie was the first full-length album recorded by Cree Summer. It was released in 1999 on the Work Group, a now-defunct imprint of Sony Music. Summer, who is Neo-Pagan and a political and human rights activist, wove themes of racism, romantic liaisons, and spirituality into the lyrics of guitar-heavy pop and folk songs. "Miss Moon" is an ode to lovemaking while a woman is menstruating. "Fall," a fully orchestral jazzballad, reads like the breakup of a relationship but is in fact the literal interpretation of the wilting and decay of a leaf: "Black stemmed, orange trimmed/with the slighest wind I'm fallen from you." "Naheo" is a tribute to Summer's Native American roots, while "Curious White Boy" is a Black woman's response to her white lover after she realizes he has become involved with her out of some sense of racial guilt: "Another housekeeper fantasy?/Coffee-colored remedy for your hangover from history."
